


Babyface Blues

by cactustree



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode: s01e01 Pilot, Season 1, pre-UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:36:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26856061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cactustree/pseuds/cactustree
Summary: “What are we doing today? Just a little trim?”Dana swallows. “No, actually, I—" She pauses, looks herself over one last time. “Can you make me look older?”~The origin of Scully’s infamous season 1 hairstyle. Oneshot, set during and after the pilot.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	Babyface Blues

The residual embarrassment from the mosquito bite incident has only just begun to wear off when a flight attendant leans down to place a paper cup of coffee on Agent Mulder’s tray table and then asks him softly, “And would your daughter like anything?”

Dana is leaning back against the headrest with her eyes closed, but she is not asleep. Coming off what have been among the most exhausting forty-eight hours of her life, she’d expected to drop into unconsciousness as soon as she was settled in her seat. Instead, despite arranging herself into the most comfortable position possible and closing her eyes against the dim cabin lights, she has remained stubbornly awake, unable to calm her restless mind—“way too wired,” to borrow a phrase.

The motel fire left her with nothing but what she’d had on her person when she and Mulder rushed out in response to the news of Peggy’s death, and so she is still dressed in the same oversized raincoat and jeans that were soaked through in the cemetery, face bare of makeup, hair loose about her shoulders. She is twenty-nine years old, a medical doctor and a federal agent, and she has just been mistaken for the daughter of her partner, who, as far as she is aware, is in his mid-thirties.

Mulder lets out a quiet chuckle. “No, thanks,” he says to the flight attendant. He does not correct her.

Dana feels him shift next to her. She can’t be sure, but she thinks he’s looking at her. Because her dignity depends on maintaining the fiction that she is asleep, she forces herself to breathe deeply, steadily, channeling every ounce of energy into holding her face in a neutral expression, ignoring the warmth in her cheeks and the pounding in her ears.

She keeps her eyes closed for the remainder of the flight, but she does not sleep. When the plane touches down, she feigns waking up and avoids Mulder’s eyes as she follows him down the aisle to the exit.

~

The next morning, Dana dons a smart charcoal-gray suit, applies her usual understated makeup, blow-dries her hair pin-straight, and slips on a pair of black pumps. Stepping in front of her full-length mirror, she expects to be reassured by the image of a well-dressed professional woman.

Instead, her reflection confirms the fear that has plagued her since the previous night, the fear that has plagued her, really, for as long as she’s worked at the Bureau: she looks like a child playing dress-up.

Dana turns this way and that, studying herself from every angle. She is wearing her best-fitting suit, the one that looks least like it’s hanging off her petite frame; her shoes are sleek and tasteful and add a couple of much-needed inches to her height; her pearl earrings, inherited from her grandmother, are simple and elegant. Yes, she has a young face, the kind that no amount of makeup can disguise, but there’s nothing she can do about that.

Her attention settles on her hair: her sensible shoulder-length hair, short enough to look neat and tidy when left down, long enough to pull back into a ponytail when she needs it out of the way. The same hairstyle she has worn for the past ten years at least.

Before leaving for the office, she flips through the phone book, dials a number, and requests the first available appointment, two weeks from Saturday.

~

Sitting in the salon chair, Dana is once again faced with her reflection. She studies the gentle curve of her chin, her rounded cheeks, her unmarred ivory skin. The stylist, who introduces herself as Marie in a thick Baltimore accent, brushes her hair in front of her shoulders.

“What are we doing today? Just a little trim?”

Dana swallows. “No, actually, I—" She pauses, looks herself over one last time. “Can you make me look older?”

Marie laughs. “That’s not a request I get very often.” And then she’s all business, picking up sections of hair, testing out different lengths between her fingers, talking rapidfire about products and styling tools as they proceed to and from the shampoo station.

Dana winces at the first few metallic snips, but soon she settles into a strange sort of calm as she watches clump after clump fall to the floor. She takes mental note of each product Marie applies to her now chin-length hair and pays careful attention to the way she blow-dries it with a round brush, achieving volume Dana never thought possible. The bangs she was so apprehensive about while Marie was cutting them now barely register as bangs at all, defying gravity through some magical combination of mousse, heat, and hairspray.

“What do you think?” Marie asks, placing the hairdryer back in its slot.

Dana is certain she is wearing the same face that she was when she came in, yet she barely recognizes herself. Forty-five minutes, a few inches of hair on the floor, and a blow-out have done what the actual aging process has failed to do over the past decade. She is twenty-nine years old, a medical doctor and a federal agent, and she has just become an adult.

“It’s perfect,” she says.

~

After her shower the next morning, Dana practices styling her hair using the products she’d purchased at the salon. When she stops by the grocery store later that afternoon, the cashier, an older man who is often on shift when she does her shopping and with whom she’s become friendly enough to exchange greetings, smiles at her but seems not to recognize her.

“Have a good day, ma’am,” he says as he hands over her receipt. Dana doesn’t register why his words are so jarring until after she’s arrived home, when she realizes that this was the first time he’d called her “ma’am” and not “miss.”

~

Mulder looks up from his desk when she enters the basement office on Monday morning. “New haircut?” It’s a question, not a statement, as though he thinks he might be wrong.

Dana manages not to roll her eyes. _Men_. “Yes,” she says. She stops herself short of asking if he likes it, and tries not to interrogate why it had even occurred to her to ask him that, or why a small part of her is hoping for a compliment.

Mulder continues to look at her for a moment with an expression that’s in the ballpark of a smile. He briefly opens his mouth, then closes it without saying anything and rises from his chair to shut off the lights.

“So, Agent Scully,” he says, turning on the projector. “What do you know about the Beast of Gum Hill?”


End file.
